Battle Lines Drawn: War Comics Since 1914 delves into the rich and diverse history of war comics, exploring how the medium represents and reflects upon global conflicts from World War I to the modern era. It critically analyses how war narratives in comics intersect with historiography, popular culture, and evolving societal perceptions of conflict.
Through a broad range of chapters, including both Western and non-Western war comics, the volume offers an inclusive perspective and addresses questions such as:
- How do war comics depict historical conflict events, and what are their limits?
- How have changing formats (e.g., long-form comics) opened new spaces for storytelling within the genre?
- And what cultural, ideological, and emotional dimensions do war comics navigate?
The book highlights not only the historical scope of war comics but also their relevance in contemporary discussions about identity, diversity, and global conflict. It balances theoretical explorations with analyses of specific texts to examine how these works reflect and shape cultural understandings of war while grappling with themes such as patriotism, trauma, political ideologies, and marginalised perspectives.
Spanning mainstream publications and indie creations, this volume offers a comprehensive exploration of how comics represent and mediate the realities of war. It will be of interest to academics, researchers, and students of comics studies, cultural studies, history, media and visual studies and war and trauma studies.
Table of Contents:
Lists of illustrations. List of contributors . Series editor’s preface. Acknowledgements Introduction Drawing War 1 Fascism at War: Italian Comics and Propaganda in L’Avventuroso 2 Aspects of War and its social impact in Brazil during World War II 3 Red Scare Heroes: Superhero Comics and American Ideology, 1947–1960 4 ANZACS & AUKUS: The Impacts of War on Australian Comics 5 Ink, Blood, and Borders: Navigating the Landscape of India's Partition through This Side, That Side and War Comics 6 “So Put Down Your Books and Pick Up a Gun”: American War Comics and the American Intervention in Vietnam, 1954-1973 7 Thanatopolitics: Violence and Death in Syrian Civil War Comics 8 War Retrospectives, Unforgotten Protagonists, Graphic Legacies: Making History Public from the First World War to VJ Day and Beyond 9 “What if…?ˮ Counterfactual History in Kaiji Kawaguchi’s Zipang 10 Merging Fact & Fiction in War Comics: Diversity, Identity and Social Injustice 11 ‘My Mate, Sir. My mate Ginger’: Representing trauma in Charley's War. Index.
About the Author :
Stephen Connor is Associate Professor of History and Associate Director of the Centre for the Study of State Violence at Nipissing University (ON, Canada). His research and publications are focused on popular culture, war comics, collective memory, and representations of conflict.
Harriet E.H. Earle is Senior Lecturer in English and Film at Sheffield Hallam University and Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of State Violence at Nipissing University (ON, Canada). She is the author of Silence in the Quagmire: US Comics of the Vietnam War (2025), Comics, Trauma, and the New Art of War (2017), and Comics: An Introduction (2020).
